


this be the verse; fred jones

by SlytherinLyn



Series: i can't wait to meet her, she sounds just like poetry [1]
Category: Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated (Cartoon 2010)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Fred deserved better, Mild Language, Songfic, except not bc its a poem?, just from the poem itself, poemfic, the romance is mild but it does exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:21:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22444012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlytherinLyn/pseuds/SlytherinLyn
Summary: They fuck you up, your mum and dad.They may not mean to, but they do.They fill you with the faults they hadAnd add some extra, just for you.Or, Fred Jones Jr. deserved better parents than what he got.
Relationships: Daphne Blake/Fred Jones
Series: i can't wait to meet her, she sounds just like poetry [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1615051
Comments: 3
Kudos: 48





	this be the verse; fred jones

**Author's Note:**

> This Be The Verse - Philip Larkin

_They fuck you up your mum and dad  
They may not mean to but they do_

Fred Jones Sr. was a liar, to his city, his staff, his son. He was not, however, in the business of lying to himself. There were a few basic things about himself he knew to be true that he didn’t say to anyone else.

Fred Jones Sr. was a liar. He had kidnapped Fred Jones Jr. as an infant in order to keep his parents away from Crystal Cove. He knew more about its past than nearly anyone else in town. He filled his mind with thoughts of a treasure he never stopped looking for.

Fred Jones Sr. was also a father. Not by blood but by choice. He raised a son on the lies that fell off his tongue like leaves from a tree in autumn. 

If you were to ask Fred Jones Sr. if he was a good father he would say yes. He would lament all the ways he had given Fred opportunities and love and success. He would say that he was the best father Fred could have ever had.

But remember, Fred Jones Sr. is a liar.

_They fill you with the faults they had  
And add some new ones just for you_

Brad Chiles and Judy Reeves only cared about two things. The cursed treasure of Crystal Cove and each other, in that order. They may have been scared away from the treasure in their youth, but they came back.

They always came back.

Four times, to be exact. The first was about a year after the incident with the Freak. They had come back to visit their hometown, though they told no one - not even Ricky and Cassidy - that they were back. They left three days earlier than they had planned, each shadow sending shivers down their spine.

The second was even shorter. Touring for their trap show, they ended up staying in a hotel just inside the city’s limits. The couple spent two nights in the hotel before packing up and moving on. They never left the building.

In the third, they arrived to Crystal Cove as a family. They left as two broken individuals.

The fourth, they took in their now-grown son, betrayed him, and died.

_But they were fucked up in their turn  
By fools in old-style hats and coats_

Fred Jones Jr. was not like any of his parents. He refused to be part of something evil, for one. Something all of them had failed at. He had the gang and they had him and they loved each other and _they were not like the others_.

Conversely, Fred Jones Jr. was a whole lot like his parents. He shared the love of traps of Brad and Judy, the lack of emotional vulnerability with Fred Jones Sr., the near obsessive nature of all three. He found that he could quite probably drown in his thoughts if he didn’t have the others to pull him back out.

Fred wonders though, what they would have done if they had been the one to experience Nibiru. If they had been the ones to come to their senses would things be different?

Would they have been okay?

_Who half the time were soppy-stern  
And half at one another’s throats_

Mystery Incorporated the First was a hot mess, to put it bluntly. In their defense, they had been corrupted by the curse of Crystal Cove, but they were bad people even before their mystery solving team. There was always a seed of wickedness in each of their hearts, and Nibiru only served to help them flower.

Pericles may have been the one to create the rifts but they all assisted in widening it. They spat insults and accusations and hate until there was nothing but the memories of a friendship that had once been strong.

Mystery Incorporated the Second faired a bit better. With the cosmos aligned just right, they arrived on the other side intact. That is more than can be said of their predecessors.

Fred almost wishes it had been his parents’ team to save (end) the world because then he could have been _normal_. He could have been happy. With parents who supported him and a life with Daphne and the gang and a life centered around mystery solving that didn’t end in the apocalypse.

Fred knows that it’s a bit foolish to wish, though. It only serves to taunt him with what he could have had.

_Man hands on misery to man  
It deepens like a coastal shelf_

When they get married, Fred takes Daphne’s last name. It feels wrong to keep a name that wasn’t his to begin with, and it feels even worse to use either of his real parents’ names.

Daphne was unsure about it at first, she’d always dreamed of a husband and to take his last name, but she gets it. She understands the deep scars left by his family. And how they would only get deeper if he were to pass on that last name to someone else, that legacy.

So Fred Jones Jr. becomes Fred Blake. 

_Get out as early as you can  
And don’t have any kids yourself_

Fred was terrified to have kids. It took many years for Daphne to convince him that he wouldn’t be his father or his parents. That they had been corrupted by the evil under Crystal Cove - the one that didn’t exist anymore - and that he wasn’t them. 

Eventually, he gave in. Nine months after accepting he could be a father, a good one unlike his own parents, Daphne gave birth to a healthy baby girl. 

And as Fred held her for the first time, he wondered how his parents - any of them really - could ever have been anything but kind to him. How they could have betrayed him and hurt him and attempt to kill him. Because he held his _daughter_ in his arms for the first time and he just knew that he would do anything for her. 

Fred doesn’t think he would have ever had kids if they had still been in the old Crystal Cove. But they weren’t. And they never forgot, but they moved on.

And a year and a half after Cassidy Angel Blake is born, Fred asks Daphne if she wants to have another child.

**Author's Note:**

> I've always wanted Fred to take Daphne's last name because I feel like he would just have so many problems with using Jones or Chiles and Daphne has a perfectly good last name so why not?
> 
> If you enjoyed please leave a comment! I promise you it means so much more than you would ever think.


End file.
